The first post in this series, Artwashing London, explored V22 and its alter-ego V220 in a little detail, linking its group of companies to its headquarters in the Isle of Man. It asked why would an arts organisation apparently interested in social impact want to register its activities in a tax haven?

This second post looks in more detail at some more of V22’s connections and compares its stated aims to its other directly or indirectly linked corporate interests. This is a trail from London to the Isle of Man to Africa and back again. I do not suggest that anything illegal has happened but there are several ethical questions that, in my opinion, should be answered.

This blog post is a transcript of an interview that was never published. The interviewer asked five questions. I answered.

Can art be an effective way of bringing about social change? If so, any examples? In what ways can it improve people's lives?

There are many in the arts world who believe art can deliver social change. Arts Council England recently published The Value of Arts and Culture to People and Society: an evidence review (April 2014), an attempt to make the case for art and culture in terms of benefits to the economy, health and wellbeing, society and education. They’re following a trend in arts and culture towards ‘cultural value’ – attempting to measure and evidence the instrumental values; this is similar to their discussion of intrinsic values described in their Understanding the value and impacts of cultural experiences: a literature review (July 2014). There are many actors involved in the broader cultural value debate including AHRC, The RSA, The University of Warwick Commission, etc. Meanwhile, Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s ArtWorks initiative and AHRC’s Connected Communities are two examples of the many academic collaborations with arts organisations and artists to also investigate the social value of the arts. In short, the debate about art as a vehicle for social change is as vast as it is fluid.

However, it’s not a new debate. Francois Matarasso is perhaps best known for fathering the idea of ‘art as panacea for all society’s ills’ in his influential text Use or Ornament? The social impact of participation in the arts (1997). His report led to a dearth of New Labour initiatives attempting to use arts and cultural projects as cures for everything from run-down urban streets to the unemployed; from rehabilitating offenders to improving the grades of low-performing inner city school children. New Labour’s promotion of arts and culture as integral to their ‘things can only get better’ utopian dream collided with their embracing of technocratic forms of governance underpinned by a positivist scientific measuring and evidencing of every aspect of society. The resulting target-driven, cost-benefit culture meant that Matarasso was criticised for not producing enough (or any) evidence to underpin the many claims he made for the role of arts and culture as a mechanism for positive social change…

So, here we are in 2014. There’s renewed interest and belief in the power of the arts and culture to be recognised as an effective engine for social change. Not just in the UK, but worldwide. Cultural policies around the globe are being honed to embed art and culture as a key aspect of supporting and delivering the agendas of almost every government department and non-government organisation. The problem with this perspective, for me, is three-fold. Firstly, and most importantly, the type of social change being sought here is always state-led and thereby fraught with political and economic agendas, meaning the arts will always be instrumental; beautifully crafted, state-funded tools, imposing the type of soft power that typically underpins neoliberal agendas. Secondly, there is the question of ‘what is social change?’ Arguably anything: Good or bad; emancipatory or totalitarian; always ideological; never likely to result in paradigm-shift. Recycling household waste is social change; but then so is Nazism. Thirdly, artists, participants, audiences and people who do not engage with the arts are usually not consulted or placed at the heart of policy-making of any kind, including cultural policy. This means that they are often left disenfranchised by cultural policies ‘done to them’, not ‘with and for them’. For me, notions of social justice offers more interesting perspectives about fairness and equality. It leaves space for self-organising, radicalism and reimagining.

In some senses, my answer may seem negative or evasive. It is not. I’m merely voicing my concerns. I am wary of grand narratives, of positivism, of state control… The arts have been used very effectively to implement all sorts of state agendas for time immemorial, but they have also been equally effective in opposing the state. I also know that people who engage in arts and cultural activities (whether ‘high’ or ‘popular’ culture) on every level gain insight and experience that is essential to living. Everyone is an example.

Do artists have a responsibility to respond to the social issues that people are concerned about?

An interesting question that immediately prompts memories of the old debate about ‘art for arts’ sake’ versus ‘art as social’. Artists respond to whatever intrigues them in whatever way they see fit. This is an essential element of their quasi-autonomous position in our world. In some cases, artists respond directly to political issues as radical activists, whilst other artists respond to social issues in ways that support political positions and policy. Others are happy painting watercolour seaside themes ad infinitum. Nothing wrong with any of this. All are matters of individual choice and circumstance. No artist has a duty to respond to social issues, although because artists are situated within society, their art is always to one degree or another socially constructed.

Anyway, ‘social issues that people are concerned about’ sounds like another grand narrative. What are these issues and who are concerned about them?

What are the most challenging aspects of working in the area of socially engaged art?

Socially engaged art is, for me, a very freeing mode of working with people and art. Social practice often takes place outside of galleries and in public places; its emphasis is on process and experience rather than aesthetics and autonomy. But this way of working creates positives and tensions. It’s a challenge to self-organise with little money; a challenge to not know who will turn up or what might happen; a challenge to not impose (or, more realistically, to minimise) positions of power within the dynamics of a socially engaged intervention so that the participants can develop a process their way. Social practice is about risk and uncertainty. It’s fun to be able to work independently but also a constant struggle. These challenges (and, probably, many more) are what makes the field so liberating for practitioners and (hopefully) participants.

Is there a way that artists can ensure they create meaningful relationships with local communities?

Tough question. Many practitioners, policy-makers and academics tend to believe that meaningful relationships with communities need to be developed slowly and carefully. I believe that short-term grassroots interventions can create ‘meaningful relationships’ (difficult to define) within communities. I also firmly assert that long-term embedding of artists in communities can be dangerous and not necessarily conducive to fostering creative independence within communities. I’ve been accused of ‘parachuting in’ many times – whether the intervention lasted a day or three months. Interestingly, these accusations always come from other local artists and arts organisations, never from local people who take part. This leads me to conceive of the role of the socially engaged artist as always that of ‘outsider’ (unless the person actually lives in the area, in which case, there are a whole load of other problems likely to arise). As outsiders, we must always be aware that we are privileged and that we can only help others find and make new potential spaces in which they may discover something about themselves that they can hopefully feed into their communities. We do this by being open to the new and by being ‘grassroots’ in our approach – never elitist or aloof. We develop close affinities, often in very short periods of time, and hopefully retain memories that remain with us, but we will always leave. We must…

How is socially engaged art perceived in the art world as a whole?

Many see the practice as ‘not art’ or as amateurish or political or radical or as an instrument for soft state control. All these condemnations are, sometimes, undoubtedly true. The field of socially engaged practice as ‘participation’ is broad, spanning everything from face-painting to Occupy. This is both a strength and a weakness. Also, the interdisciplinary nature of some practices means that boundaries are often blurred between art, science, politics, environmentalism, etc., etc. I think this inability to neatly box socially engaged art is exciting for practitioners but threatening for many traditional arts organisations and artists; it is also confusing for many policy-makers and academics. People taking part do not care what we call what we do. We don’t label our work. For participants, we’re us – people who listen and help them do creative stuff, or challenge people to think differently, to think more…

In my view, any attempt to accredit or institutionalise socially engaged art means it’s no longer ‘socially engaged’ but ‘participatory’. It’s socially engaged art’s ability to challenge status quos, even work with others to radically challenge the state, from positions independent from the state that makes the practice interesting and attractive to more and more artists as a viable way of making art with people rather than for organisations.

This is the fourth post taken from my draft literature review which is part of my ongoing PhD research around the question: Can participatory art support sustainable social change? The other posts are below. Please feel free to comment and criticise…

Whether art, or any other activity for that matter, can ever change contemporary society, has been and remains a source of much discussion. Whilst the arts perspective has been reviewed previously, other fields such as sociology, politics, philosophy, etc. have increasingly (perhaps because of state interventionism discussed previously) become interested in discussing this question from an arguably more academic perspective. This section reviews some of the key works about art and social change, starting with a deeply critical essay, Art and Social Change (2005).

In Art and Social Change, Dillemuth et al. criticise many contemporary cultural and education institutions as being ‘nothing more than legal and administrative organs of the dominant system’; by taking part in these activities, we ‘internalise their values, transmit their ideologies and act as their audience/public/social body’ (Dillemuth, et al., 2005, p. 378). The socially accepted façade of these institutions purports to represent our society but hides the ‘dysfunctional relics of the bourgeois project’, encouraged by neoliberalism to ‘become even more obscure, more unreliable and more exclusive’; indivisible from the state (Dillemuth, et al., 2005, p. 378). The authors contest that the cultural and education sectors have betrayed their responsibilities to society that once claimed to be based upon ‘transparency, accountability, equality and open participation’ in favour of survival by submission to the state (Dillemuth, et al., 2005, p. 379). Their solution is self-organisation; their manifesto culminating in a call for a fluidly flexible, agile ‘non-identity’ that is ‘[m]utually reinforcing, self-valorising, self-empowering, self-historicising and, as a result, not compatible with fixed institutional structures’ (Dillemuth, et al., 2005, pp. 380-381). This is, perhaps, social change, radically reimagined.

When Wolff categorically states that ‘[a]rt is a social product’ and that ‘it is not useful to think of artistic work as essentially different from other kinds of work’ (Wolff, 1993, pp. 1-2), she dissolves art into life. She confidently claims that ‘the sociological study of the arts has done a good job in exposing many of the extra-aesthetic elements involved in aesthetic judgement – the values of class, or the influence of political or moral ideas, for example’ (Wolff, 1993, p. 7); that the artist has never ‘worked in isolation from social and political constraints of a direct or indirect kind’ (Wolff, 1993, p. 27). But surely, this is an overtly sociological position which, as is typical of much of this type of research, avoids discussing many (or any) examples of specific artistic practice in relation to presented hypotheses. Adopting a similar tenet, Belfiore and Bennett, in The Social Impact of the Arts (2008), focus on developing the notion of instrumentalism as being at least 2,500 years old; not a contemporary phenomenon driven by the need to secure arts funding from the state (Belfiore & Bennett, 2008, p. 194). Their historical review concludes that:

‘the “negative tradition” – that is, the view persisting over time that the arts have a negative influence on individuals and society as a whole – resounds as strongly as the “positive tradition”, which maintains that the arts are “good for you” and which can be seen as predominant in today’s debates over cultural and educational policy’ (Belfiore & Bennett, 2008, p. 191).

This sociological approach to appraising contemporary arts (and socially engaged) practice as being part of a long continuum is useful on the one hand, narrowly reductive on the other. Many works around cultural regeneration and place take a similarly neutral stance. For example, Erasing the Traces, Tracing Erasures portrays the cultural regeneration of Newcastle/Gateshead as a project which ‘by attempting to re-make the region’s image and, simultaneously, key into networks of mobile capital by courting the tourist market and disposable income of locals’ helped create a new arts landscape in which buildings like The Sage ‘simultaneously erase and evoke, eradicate and re-inscribe notions of cultural memory and belonging as it pertains to contemporary cities’ (Thompson, 2010, p. 56). Such viewpoints stem from Bourriaud’s oft criticised theory of relational aesthetics which disparages radical ‘[s]ocial utopias and revolutionary hopes’ and ‘everyday micro-utopias and imitative strategies’ because any position ‘that is “directly” critical of society is futile, if based on the illusion of a marginality that is nowadays impossible, not to say regressive’ (Bourriaud, 2002, p. 31).

Neutralising sociological perspectives such as those of Wolff, Belfiore and Bennett, Thompson, Bourriaud, et al. stand in stark contrast to the critical postmodernist perspective of ‘a postmodernism of resistance, including resistance to that easy postmodernism of the “anything goes” variety’ (Huyssen, 1998 [1984], p. 336). Huyssen’s call to ‘abandon that dead-end dichotomy of politics and aesthetics which for too long has dominated accounts of modernism, including the aestheticist trend within poststructuralism’ clearly aims to increase ‘the productive tension between the political and the aesthetic, between history and the text, between engagement and the mission of art’ (Huyssen, 1998 [1984], pp. 336-337). This position perhaps relates more to contemporary discussions about socially engaged art by practitioners than by many sociologists; offering alternative ways of envisioning art and social change rather than historicising it. It also links with critical theory (discussed in more detail in a forthcoming post.)

The Gifts of the Muse (2004) is a classic report about funding the arts as a means of ‘serving broad social and economic goals’ alongside an increased emphasis on the need for institutions to demonstrate the value of the arts; discussing potential instrumental and intrinsic benefits; recognising that intrinsic values are often neglected in favour of outputs and goals, even though they have a ‘central role… in generating all benefits deriving from the arts’ (McCarthy, et al., 2004, pp. xi-xii). McCarthy et al. make a coherent case that the arts are not valued by audiences and participants for their instrumental benefits but because they create meaning, pleasure and satisfaction which can lead indirectly to broader individual and community benefits (McCarthy, et al., 2004, p. xv). Sustained access to and involvement is essential to the report’s findings, as are three stages of access to the arts: ‘gateway experiences’ which are ‘most conducive to future arts involvement if they happen when people are young (that is, of school age, particularly pre-teen)’; ‘fully engaging’, high quality follow-on experiences that help ‘change individual tastes and enrich subsequent arts experience’; and ‘the intrinsic worth of the arts experience’ described as vital for long-term involvement in the arts (McCarthy, et al., 2004, p. xvii). The report’s authors contrast this perspective with the aforementioned list of instrumental benefits purported to ‘be an antidote to myriad social problems’, economically important, etc., critiquing the arts for using ‘the language of the social sciences and the broader policy debate’ as justification for their continued existence (McCarthy, et al., 2004, p. 1).

In fact, McCarthy et al. are deeply scathing about evidence-based research on instrumental benefits, expanded beyond economics to include ‘cognitive, attitudinal and behavioral, and health benefits at the individual level, and social and economic benefits at the community level’ (McCarthy, et al., 2004, p. 7), noting that this research does not explain how participation in the arts generates these supposed benefits, nor does it ‘specify the circumstances in which benefits accrue, the populations most likely to benefit in such circumstances, and the level of arts involvement needed to generate benefits’ (McCarthy, et al., 2004, p. 21). They go on to suggest that methodological problems mean that many of the claims ‘about the arts’ instrumental benefits are unsubstantiated’ (McCarthy, et al., 2004, p. 33). In contrast, the authors explain that the intrinsic effects of the arts cannot be investigated using ‘the more objective view of the social scientist’ - a politically-driven ‘social science model that focuses on measurable outcomes’; the intangibility of intrinsic benefits being difficult (if not almost impossible) to accurately define (McCarthy, et al., 2004, pp. 37-38). The report also suggests that the modernist notions of aesthetics and ‘art for art’s sake’ has made art seem, to many people, ‘remote, esoteric, and removed from life’ (McCarthy, et al., 2004, p. 38).

The Gifts of the Muse, also places a great deal of emphasis on the importance of introducing children to arts and other creative activities early in their lives (McCarthy, et al., 2004, p. 54); the authors contend that ‘most of the claimed learning and behavioral benefits are generated by arts experiences in schools’ (McCarthy, et al., 2004, p. 71). The importance of creative experiences to children is a point discussed further later in this chapter in relation to the works of D.W. Winnicott.

So is social change achievable, measurably or even desirable? Are the arts any better equipped than other fields to support social change? Who drives change anyway? Is social change always a concept of the state – driven by instrumentalism? Is social justice different, more democratic? More to follow…

There is a crucial debate that is often still referred to when questions of art and social change arise. It is essentially a disagreement about the potentialities of participatory art as a mode of effecting social change; predominantly a discussion about policy and methodology – two questions that are at the heart of much of the writing about socially engaged art and its practice.

Matarasso published Use or Ornament? in 1997 for New Labour think-tank Comedia. It quickly became the cornerstone of New Labour’s drive to increase the status of arts and culture in the UK; it made impressive claims about the many possible forms of social impact that participation in arts and cultural activities could achieve. The report seemed to present a compelling case to many policy-makers that participatory arts might be a panacea for all ills by claiming, very positively, that:

‘Participation in the arts does bring benefits to individuals and communities. On a personal level these touch people’s confidence, creative and transferable skills and human growth, as well as their social lives through friendships, involvement in the community and enjoyment. Individual benefits translate into wider social impact by building the confidence of minority and marginalised groups, promoting contact and contributing to social cohesion. New skills and confidence can be empowering as community groups become more (and more equitably) involved in local affairs. Arts projects can strengthen people’s commitment to places and their engagement in tackling problems, especially in the context of urban regeneration. They encourage and provide mechanisms for creative approaches to development and problem solving, and offer opportunities for communities and institutions to take risks in a positive way. They have the capacity to contribute to health and social support of vulnerable people, and to education’ (Matarasso, 1997, p. 74).

The report continued by extending the claims for the efficacy of participatory art in achieving positive ‘social outcomes’ because it is different from and superior to other forms of arts experiences (Matarasso, 1997, pp. 74-79). Matarasso warned that projects must be ‘well-conceived and managed’ to achieve positive social impact or they could otherwise produce ‘negative outcomes’ (Matarasso, 1997, p. 75). The report clearly suggested to New Labour policy-makers that the project of ‘social inclusion’ could be furthered by ‘a marginal repositioning of social policy priorities’ together with ‘a review of the cultural dimension of social policy by local authorities and other major agencies’ (Matarasso, 1997, p. 79). It also provocatively suggested that art purporting to either conjure ‘demons of social engineering and Soviet Realism’ or romantic notions of the ‘neurasthenic anti-hero, whose artistic sensibility requires protection from the pollution of modern life’, were positions ‘used by people who should know better to frighten us into our places’ (Matarasso, 1997, pp. 80-81).

Although frequently criticised, the most critical response to Use or Ornament? by Paola Merli was not published until seven years later. Her approach focused on criticising Matarasso’s research as flawed, perhaps because of his ‘strong desire to be relevant and useful to the policy process and to contribute to decision-making’ (Merli, 2004, p. 17). To Merli, the research data did not support Matarasso’s conclusions reached. She claimed that:

‘Many of the 50 hypotheses are expressed as relationship between abstract concepts which are not observable, nor measurable. For example: participation in the arts "can give people influence over how they are seen by others", or "can help validate the contribution of a whole community", or "can help people extend control over their own lives", or "can help community groups raise their vision beyond the immediate”’ (Merli, 2004, p. 17).

Furthermore, Merli criticised Matarasso’s questionnaire because it was not systematic, nor formulated to test his hypotheses, nor did it consider or attempt to control social desirability bias; she also attacked him for failing to adequately explore the likely duration of the results obtained or the social groups his participants belonged to (Merli, 2004, pp. 17-18). But it was not just Matarasso’s highly suspect collection and interpretation of data that Merli found wanting, she also questioned his interpretation of social change, claiming that he, along with other policy-makers and intellectuals, shared ‘a particular philosophical attitude towards society’; a ‘benevolent’ vision of ‘"new missionaries", who play guitar with marginalised youth, the disabled and the unemployed, aiming at mitigating the perception which they have of their own exclusion’ (Merli, 2004, p. 18). Contrasting this ‘revival’ of participation with the community arts movement, Merli found that, whereas ‘the original phenomenon was a spontaneous movement… directed to the expression of conflicts’ and devoted to achieving ‘emancipation and liberation from any form of social control… by means of artistic creativity’, Matarasso’s vision was a form of soft social control prescribed by the rich to anesthetise the poor (Merli, 2004, pp. 19-20).

Merli’s proposed alternative to the prescriptive Use or Ornament? was itself, however, rather limp in its attempt to suggest areas for future research – many of which are still relatively unexplored by many socially engaged practitioners and projects to this day. Merli suggested that social impact assessment (an approach very much focused upon investigating the social effects of public policy), and interdisciplinary research (including the fields of psychology and sociology), could be useful methods of evaluating participatory art activities because they recognised the specificity of each intervention and offered a firm theoretical basis for future research in the field, as well as offering evidence about the effects creativity and perception on participants (Merli, 2004, p. 20).In Vygotsky and Sloboda, however, Merli chose to narrowly focus upon creativity based on contested social and cognitive psychological approaches with little to link them to creativity or the arts. She also described Bourdieu’s treatise on art as an elitist tool that reinforces social difference, Outline of a Sociological Theory of Art Perception (1968), as ‘a grounding theory for interesting research on the social impact of the arts’ (Merli, 2004, pp. 20-21). Nonetheless, Merli’s suggestion to utilise detailed interviews rather than questionnaires because they can help the researcher ‘understand - and not simply to measure - the ideas and the feelings of the interviewee’ (Merli, 2004, p. 21) is certainly of relevance to methods used in this research.

COLOURING IN CULTURE

A blog by PhD researcher, art historian, curator, writer, activist and community arts practitioner Stephen Pritchard about art, activism and politics in the place where we live.

My research covers participation in art and culture spanning from everyday creativity, participatory art, socially engaged art and social practice to social praxis, political art and activist art; from state instrumentalisation to carnivalesque freedom.